In our in-depth analysis of the potential of AI in the music sector, we had fun having it generate an elusive Italian commercial for Rabbit R1, the AI device that bewitched the 2024 edition of the CES in Las Vegas.
“The future is here“, intones the voice guided by artificial intelligence. It’s a shame, however, that it didn’t exactly go that way, given that, between accusations and negative votes, the release of Rabbit R1 in the United States of America it didn’t go at all as rabbit inc had hoped. The flop of the product, which still sold very well in the pre-order phase, sparks a wider debate, especially after also seeing the poor response to its “twin” Humane Ai Pin. From hype culture to communication gapsthe Rabbit R1 affair has a lot to tell us about the Tech sector in general.
From CES to 100,000 preorders, until the disaster
The history of Rabbit R1 has its roots in enthusiasts’ hunger for new things and of the sector in general, fueled disproportionately by the arrival of a revolution called artificial intelligence. The culture of hype, therefore: this is what led the Rabbit R1 to sell in just a few months over 100,000 units in preorderbatch after batch, before anyone had even tried it properly.
On the other hand, the moment turned out to be perfect: the smartphone world has flattened a lot in recent years and the Tech sector in general struggling to find the next big thing hardware. In a similar scenario, the promise of a physical format of technology capable of looking beyond the shell of a smartphone/tablet can only attract curiosity. This is especially true if associated with a cute orange design edited by Teenage Engineering, as well as at an attractive price compared to direct competition: 199 dollars without a subscription (compared to 699 dollars and 24 dollars per month for Humane Ai Pin). In short, in the era of AI, despite the assumptions, the reasons why more than someone, including us, thought of giving Rabbit R1 at least a chance are very clear. However, we dealt more with the ambitions of the project in the in-depth analysis dedicated to the announcement of Rabbit R1.
The disastrous US launch is a different matter altogether, but let’s be clear that our Rabbit R1 unit has yet to arrive, given the different shipping times for Europe. There will therefore certainly be a way to return to the product with a cool head, but what happened abroad undoubtedly deserves to be explored in greater depth.
After that Humane Ai Pinthe “pocket” AI device created by a startup led by former Apple employees, was quickly put aside due to various problems, the arrival on the market of Rabbit R1 was viewed by many in a hopeful manner. On the other hand, by virtue of the presence of the display and its lower price, the orange device represents a decidedly more interesting solution than its direct rival. However, already from the first foreign tests of Rabbit R1 a less than idyllic scenario began to emerge, starting from the number of services accessible directly from Rabbithole (the web portal for connecting accounts), just four. Besides Midjourney and Spotify, there’s only Uber and DoorDash. There Teach Mode designed to allow the user to train the AI to use other apps, however, for now it is not available, just as many other of the most intriguing functions promised by rabbit inc. are not available. This means that, at the moment, a common smartphone allows you to do much more compared to Rabbit R1, sometimes even faster. The first tests had already highlighted the fact that it was a product launched in a sort of way early access, on the wave of enthusiasm. No one, however, expected what would happen in the following days.
In fact, at the end of April 2024, it was moved to rabbit inc. accused of disguising an Android app behind Rabbit R1. An article from the portal Android Authority he claims, in fact, to have managed to obtain an APK file tied to the device interface and that I had the ability to start conversations with AI from a Google Pixel 6a. From then on, the Web went wild. One of the most widespread phrases? “It could have been an app“.
The company, however, was quick to provide an official response, making it clear that Rabbit OS and LAM have an AOSP base”very personalized“, but that without an appropriate operating system, without firmware modifications and without cloud this type of solution cannot work as it should. The CEO of rabbit inc. Jesse Lyu has therefore asked users not to download unofficial emulators from the Web, also considering that these can represent a danger in terms of security. “Rabbit R1 is not an Android app“, said the CEO, but now the mess has been made and the confirmation of the presence of an AOSP (Android Open Source Project) base has certainly not gone unnoticed among enthusiasts, so much so that in another Android Authority article it is put highlight the fact that the device could use Android 13 “behind the scenes”.
But it didn’t end there: the story has invariably drawn attention to the actual functioning of Rabbit R1, leading many people to try to find out if there was more. Here, then, at the beginning of May 2024 the fact did not go unnoticed a brief outage with the ChatGPT API appears to have rendered the device’s push-to-talk feature temporarily unusable. Of course, it was always clear that the device worked with multiple LLMs, including OpenAI’s, but the timing of the outage certainly did not contribute to improving the overall picture.
The “final blow” came with the release of foreign reviews. The Verge gave Rabbit R1 3/10, saving only price, design and microphone. The title of the review leaves little room for doubt: “nothing to see here“. It didn’t fare any better on the pages of Wired, for another 3/10 review which recommends “jump” this product. The limited available functions are indicated among the main defects, but there are also slowness in certain responses and poor autonomy to outline a different picture than hoped for. If you then look at the problems encountered even with those few integrated services, for example the lack of recognition of requests relating to the playback of songs on Spotify, the summary is that a modern smartphone already performs operations optimally that the Rabbit R1 simply cannot. able to accomplish. All this without counting the hallucinations that the use of artificial intelligence can potentially bring to the table. Of course, this type of device can improve with future software updates, but given the starting point it seems like it realistic to think that it will take much more to effectively kick off the era of intelligent agents described by Satya Nadella. We reserve the right to carry out the necessary evaluations when Rabbit R1 arrives in our area, but for the moment the direction seems to be well delineated.
